The Centre for Hidden Histories: Community, Commemoration and the First World War

Leeds City Museum and the Centre for Hidden Histories invite you to save the dates for a pair of events taking place at the museum on the 21st and 22nd October.

Study Day (£20pp*)
Global Perspectives on WW1
11am – 4pm, Friday 21st October

Community Day
Peoples’ Pathways: Soldiers from Overseas in WW1
11am – 3pm, Saturday 22nd October

Call for Participation
We’d love to hear from experts and community-led projects that explore these themes. Slots from between 30mins and an hour are available at each event for talks, presentations, workshops and performances. Please email lucy.moore@leeds.gov.uk by 31/8/16 if you are interested.

*Some bursaries may be available to help with costs. Please get in touch for more details.

On the 1st and 2nd July 2016, the Centre for Hidden Histories held its major conference and community showcase, ‘Beyond the Western Front – the Global First World War’, at the Albert Hall Conference Centre, Nottingham.  Timed to coincide with the centenary commemorations of the Somme, the conference featured a diverse range of academics and community groups.  All of the speakers featured were committed to uncovering both the global history of the conflict and some of its ‘hidden’ or less publically discussed histories (click here to access the conference programme and poster).

At the event, participants were surveyed and asked which ‘Hidden History’ they had discovered during the course of the conference.  Of twenty-one responses, a number of clusters were identified. Six people said that they had learnt something new about the Eastern Front, in particular Russia, five people cited learning more about the relationship between the Great War and the Chinese Communist Party, four people commented that they had been given more information on Africa’s role in the conflict, four people cited an increase in their knowledge of India’s contribution. Finally, three people mentioned the significance of learning about the treatment of Germans in Britain during World War I.

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One of the Centre’s academic researchers, Dr Tudor Georgescu, shares his call for stereoscopic images of the First World War.

As part of an exhibition focussed on the war beyond the Western Front at Oxford Brookes University, Dr Tudor Georgescu is looking to convert a series of stereoscopic views to 3D pictures and would very much value your help in putting together a set of twenty to thirty images to highlight a remarkable history of the War and its visual legacy.

If you have stereoscopic pictures capturing the Italian, Balkan, Middle Eastern or Russian campaigns, for example, he would be really grateful if you could let him use these for the exhibition planned for 18 Nov – 16 Dec 2016, at Glass Tank, Oxford Brookes University.

The exhibition sets out to explore hidden histories of the First World War that go beyond the well trodden trenches of the Western Front, refocusing on themes and theatres that have remained elusive. As seen through the prism of the Oxf and Bucks battalions’ experiences of the Italian, Balkan, Middle Eastern and Russian campaigns, a remarkable and graphic history emerges, one that also lucidly illustrates the truly global dimensions of the First World War and our role therein.

He is keen to have high resolution scans of pictures that can be scaled up to A3 or A2 or larger size to make the most of their visual impact, and if you could send him a picture that would be great, or he can arrange for them to be sent to his office at Brookes and he’ll return them to you after digitisation.

He will, of course acknowledge you as the source, and if you have a story to go with the pictures and their journeys certainly let him know! Similarly, if you have any comments, questions or otherwise about it all.

Should you be able to contribute please get in touch, he would need to finalise the list of pictures by 31st August 2016.

 

For further information, please contact Tudor Georgescu

E: Tgeorgescu@brookes.ac.uk

Postal: Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane Campus, Tonge 6.59, Oxford, OX3 0BP

Visit the “War Beyond the Western Front” Project webpage: Link